Trial by Jury

Trial by Jury Program

Trial by Jury Cast

Directors

Director’s Notes

Trial by Jury was the only one-act opera Gilbert & Sullivan wrote together and the very first of the operas they wrote for D’Oyly Carte.  Their one previous collaboration, Thespis (1871), had only moderate success and had not been a pleasant experience for Gilbert.  With all the known copies of that score lost in a warehouse fire, today we have no way of knowing how good Sullivan’s efforts had been on behalf of Gilbert’s libretto.  At the time there seemed no reason why the two would ever join forces again.  Then, three years later Richard D’Oyly Carte needed a curtain raiser for his upcoming production of Offenbach’s La Perichole.  Gilbert already had a great little one-act to offer him, and the producer proposed that Sullivan set it to music.  It seems time is a great healer.  Less than three months later, Trial was a huge hit and is now the world’s most-produced English language one-act opera, not to mention the happy reboot of an immensely successful artistic partnership.

Lesley Hendrickson

Felix Aguilar-Tomlinson as Edwin, the Defendant,
Steve Hendrickson as the Learned Judge and
Grace Lowe as Angelina, the Plaintiff

Trial by Jury Reviews

            Cherry and Spoon, by Jill Schafer

            One Girl Two Cities, by Laura vanZandt

            Twin Cities Daily Planet, by Basil Considine

Two excellent internet resources for information about Trial by Jury:

Wikipedia – Trial by Jury

The Gilbert & Sullivan Archive – Trial by Jury